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When your car needs maintenance, you go to a mechanic. When your fridge goes out, you call the refrigerator repairman, and when your skates get gunked up, the pros at Southeastern Skate in Roanoke, Virginia, have you covered.

At Southeastern Skate, we have every brand and style of roller and inline skate your customers could want, but make sure you know how to give your customers the great advice they deserve when it comes to keeping their new skates in tip-top condition.

Roller Skate Maintenance Tips

First things first, let’s talk about the importance of keeping skates well maintained for the safety of your customers and the longevity of their purchase. Staying on top of regular and routine tune-ups will keep your skaters skating longer and more comfortably.

We’ve all gotten a pair of skates with a bad bearing or dry rotted boots, right? There’s not much worse. And nothing will keep your customers off the hardwoods quicker than a pair of malfunctions skates.

Make sure you give your customers these little tips to keep their skates rolling and the good times coming week after week!

• Keep Your Skates Dry – Getting a pair of skates wet is hands down the worst move you can make. Care should always be taken to make sure inline and roller skates stay as dry as possible.
• Keep Your Trucks Tight – Things tend to loosen up with lots of use. Your trucks aren’t any different. Make sure to periodically check that trucks are tight and secured properly to the boot.
• Wipe Down Your Skates – You’ll want to wipe down your skates with leather oil once a month or so. Keeping your boots conditioned will keep them comfortable and in great shape infinitely longer.
• Check Your Bearings – Bearings go bad. It’s just a sad fact of life. Make sure you check that your bearings are all rolling smoothly and if not, swap them out.

For more information or to restock your pro shop, give us a call or check out our online store today!

As we write this, we’re getting ready for our annual tradeshow on Oct 1 and 2.  We usually have a lot of new product news at the show and we’ll try to do a follow up flyer and email blast soon after it is over to review everything.

We did a series of interviews with different vendors before they come to the show.  We’ve sent those out as emails and we’ve also posted them at www.seskate.com/blog.  We talked to Sure-Grip, Roller Derby, Vanilla, RollerBones, the RSA, and Funtastic Novelty about new products and the upcoming skate season.  If you missed the emails, be sure to check them out on our blog.

Roller Derby has introduced a new skate in their Candi Girl lineup called The Lucy.  This is a smaller high top adjustable skate with a pineapple design.  The small fits sz 12J-2 and the medium fits sz 3-6.  These are in stock now.

The White Comet skates have been on backorder for quite a long time, but we just received a shipment.  We now have all sizes, except for size 3, in stock again.

We also received a large shipment from Chicago Skate and almost all of their skates are back in stock again.

We’ve been doing interviews with the different vendors that are coming to our tradeshow to let people know what to expect. Funtastic replied back with a VIDEO interview, which is pretty impressive.  Here is the link:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zCxF4Hxvb1x0nGhbRqAM7QRxHqfClkoQ/view?ts=5ba99e80

Candi Girl Lucy

 

Roller Derby is expanding the Candi Girl line to include a new skate called “The Lucy”.  The Lucy is a girl’s adjustable skate.  It has a white high top boot with an attractive pineapple print design and yellow wheels.  The boot has a comfortable padded lining.  The wheels are 54mm and the bearings are Silver-5 rated.  The small size fits 12J-2 and the medium size fits 3-6.  They’re in stock now.

 

 

Comet Skates

The girl’s white Comet skates have been out of stock for some time, but we just received a shipment and now have all sizes EXCEPT for 3.

We are doing a series of interviews with different vendors as they get ready to come to our annual tradeshow (Oct 1-2, Roanoke VA, wholesale only, not for the general public).

 

You may have already seen ones from Sure-Grip, RollerBones, Roller Derby, and the RSA office.  If you’ve missed them, they’re available at www.seskate.com/blog.

 

 

The newest one, below, is with Nathan from Vanilla Skate Company.

 

Q1

How are things at Vanilla as the fall season gets ready to start?  How do you see the skating market right now?  Are your customers optimistic as the skate season gets started?

Life is great at Vanilla Skates!  We just returned from our “Summer Jam” skating event at Classic Fun Center in Sandy, Utah.  Summer Jam featured our sponsored skaters as well as lots of new faces and talent.  I’m pretty confident in saying, the recreational and jam skate market is going strong and this coming season will be great for everyone in the business!

 

Q2

Who from your company is planning to come to our show?

Nathan, who attended last year, will be attending again.  

 

Q3

Do you have any new products coming out this fall?  Will they be in stock by the tradeshow?  Or will they be coming out a little later in the season?

We just released a bunch of new swag (shirts, hoodies, pop-sockets, and wristbands).   We’re also finalizing a new color-way for the VNLA Junior with expectations of a mid-early 2019 release date.  We also have a couple of new things up our sleeves.  We have a new boot design that is being finalized at this moment. We hope to have final samples in our hands soon.

 

Q4

What are some of your best sellers right now?  What sets them apart from other products on the market right now?

The VNLA Tuxedo & Code Red have always been crowd favorites.  In addition, the new Stealth and Zona Rosa have only been on the market for 7 months and are quickly gaining popularity.  Don’t forget, this will be the first holiday season for those two boots (Stealth and Zona Rose).  As of right now, our sales projections for them are strong.

  

Q5

Anything else you’d like our customers to know as they get ready for our show?

Vanilla appreciates all of the support from the rinks. Please stop by the booth and spend some time with us.  We would love to hear how your business is doing and what we can do to help support it.  Remember, your success is our success.

We’ve been doing a series of interviews with the vendors that are coming to our tradeshow (Oct 1 and 2, in Roanoke, VA).  We’ve already sent out:
Roller Derby – Tony Muse and Will Marion

RollerBones – Vicki Handyside

Sure-Grip – Jim Ball and Steven Ball

 

Today we’re talking to Jim McMahon and Angela Tanner from the RSA’s national office.

 

How are things at the RSA as the fall season gets ready to start?  The RSA is hopping right now with having just completed Sk8Expo which had a record high attendance this past August. We moved this show up from our typical mid-September dates this year. We also are about to begin National Roller Skating Month and our members have had their materials since the beginning of August. This year’s poster has been very well received. We also are working on receiving the ASCAP payments from our member’s and working hard on several new initiatives.

 

How do you see the skating market right now? We see it as a very positive market with many members stating that they are having a better year this year than last year at this time. We see this as a very positive thing as the season for skating is really only just now about to take off.

 

Are your members optimistic as the skate season gets started? See previous answer, lol. But yes, most of our member’s seem to be feeling very positively about their upcoming STEM School parties, Halloween programming, and other activities.

 

Who from the RSA is planning to come to our show? President Jeff Couey and Executive Director Jim McMahon will be in attendance representing the RSA. The RSA will also have a booth at this year’s show.

 

Do you have any new programs coming out this fall? We just launched our new partnerships with both ASCAP and Airgas and we think these two programs will really benefit our membership not just this year but in the years to come.

 

What is new or different this year? We have moved up the date our annual convention to the end of April which is a departure from our May date. We hope this will increase attendance. We are also back on the Strip for the first time in approximately a decade.

 

What are you hoping to launch soon? We are about to launch our Kids Skate Free digital magazine which is an online parenting magazine called Today’s Family Fun. We think this will help increase skate sales, birthday parties, and increased awareness of roller skating.

 

Tell us a little about the meetings the RSA will be hosting on Monday night?  [editor’s note – these meetings are NOT just for RSA members, they’re open to anyone that attends our tradeshow] I anticipate this to be another great meeting as it has been in the past. Section 12 has consistently done a fabulous job. This is really their meeting not ours but I look forward to the opportunity to participate and present during their meeting.

 

Anything else you’d like our customers to know as they get ready for our show? This show is a great opportunity to network with your fellow rink operators but even without the excellent networking time and great vendors this show is worth attending for a third reason. The food. This show always has the best food. Glenn is also always a gracious host. We thank him for allowing us to have a booth at his show.

 

We are doing a series of interviews with different vendors as they get ready to come to our annual tradeshow (Oct 1-2, Roanoke VA, wholesale only, not for the general public).    We’ve already done interviews with Vicki from RollerBones and Tony and Will from Roller Derby.  This new one is with Jim Ball and Steven Ball from Sure-Grip Skate.

 

Q1

How are things at Sure-Grip as the fall season gets ready to start?  How do you see the skating market right now?  Are your customers optimistic as the skate season gets started?

SureGrip:  The fall season is always really exciting, lots of new item that we feel really compliment the current market.  Looking at trends all over the country is the best part of what we get to do.  Trying to see what’s hot and what’s not.  In the past we have partnered with a few fashion brands that allowed us to develop items that might be out of the box but have proved to be successful on the sales front.

 

Over the past few years we have seen the skating market grow little by little every year.  Dance skating seems to be the biggest market of late and we plane to target that market with a lot of the new items we have for the fall season and into spring 2019.

 

I think it will be interesting to see what consumers do this holiday season.  I just saw a report that retail in store sales were up this year over last year.  This is encouraging for our business and something the rinks and local skate shops should pay attention to.  The key is to be educated about the products and education the consumers.  Coming to the show is a great opportunity to learn about the products that our offered in our market.  The roller rinks have a great advantage over a shop or even the internet as the rink supplies the venue for using our products.  We need to use this as a sales tool and the opportunity to sell skates and other products is much better in a rink than anywhere else.

 

Q2

Who from your company is planning to come to our show?

Sure-Grip:  Myself (Jim Ball) and my son (Steven Ball) will be attending this year.

 

Q3

Do you have any new products coming out this fall?  Will they be in stock by the tradeshow?  Or will they be coming out a little later in the season?

Sure-Grip:  Yes of course.  We have our new Prism skate that was a partnership with a local fashion brand.  We also have a new rink speed wheel we are calling ICE.  We also have new Glitter GT50 skate that is playing off the success of the Stardust skate.  We also have a few new colors in the RX toe stop line and some new slip not laces to offer.  Most if not all of this is available at the trade show but some will become available in the near future.

 

Q4

What are some of your best sellers right now?  What sets them apart from other products on the market right now?

Sure-Grip:  Our best seller so far is the Stardust skate and of course the GT50.  We hope to continue the success of the Stardust with adding a new gold color that was requested by many of our social media fans.  Most of the other new product being offered this holiday season is supplemental to existing product, new colors and styles.  As of now we are the only ones selling a complete sparkle skate.  Some of our supplemental items like slip Not laces and Rx Toe Stops are the only items on the market right now and we see sales growing with the newly designed colorways.

 

Q5

Anything else you’d like our customers to know as they get ready for our show?

Sure-Grip:  Use this opportunity to learn about new products and trends.  Skaters want to skate and skaters want to express themselves, give them that ability.  We would like to thank SESSR for this opportunity to attend this show and speak to customers about our products.  We are passionate about this sport and we are passionate about our products we offer.  We take great pride in our products and we have been doing so for 80 years.  Thank you again and we hope to see you at the show.

 

 

We are doing a series of interviews with different vendors as they get ready to come to our annual tradeshow (Oct 1-2, Roanoke VA, wholesale only, not for the general public).    We did one with Roller Derby yesterday, and today we have Vicki Handyside from Roll One/RollerBones.

 

Q:  How are things at Roll One as the fall season gets ready to start?

Vicki:  The RollerBones wheels and Bones/RollerBones bearings are doing quite well. We are very pleased with the way sales are heading into fall and closing out the 2018 Skating Season.

 

Q:  How do you see the skating market right now?

Vicki:  From talking with fellow skating coaches skate class attendance is up.  The rink where I teach had a very strong summer as far as classes go and their session business did a little better this summer.  Which always leads to more equipment sales.  It especially helps when the rink has stock on hand and someone available to answer questions or fit a skater.  Skating teachers often take on this role after their classes which is helpful to the rink since they know what type of skate their class skater should be purchasing.
Q:  Are your customers optimistic as the skate season gets started?

Vicki:  It seems everyone enjoyed a good summer and looking forward to a fun and busy fall. Sonny Grenier with Skating Plus in CA said he is very optimistic since his numbers for the past year have been dramatically up, he has seen double digit increases.  Sonny said he is looking forward to another good year.  He feels more traffic will bring even more skate and equipment sales.  The Skating Plus offers skating classes, has an Art Club and a Derby League.

 

Q:  Who from your company is planning to come to our show?

Vicki:  Vicki Handyside/Roll One Sales Rep

 

Q:  Do you have any new products coming out this fall?

Vicki:  We are currently working on new wheels but these may not be out until Winter.  I will be happy to tell you more about them at the show.

 

Q  What are some of your best sellers right now?

Vicki:  The RollerBones Team Wheels and Elites are doing very well.  We have re-released the 57 and 62 Elites in the 103 hardness due to so many requests for them from the adult skating market.  And as always the Bones Swiss and Reds continue to be number 1.

 

Q:  What sets them apart from other products on the market right now?

Vicki:  I will never tire of saying,  “it’s our quality”.  We’ve gone to special lengths to develop brands that are durable and will give the best performance for the skater.  Skaters are our main focus and want them to enjoy skating to the fullest and this can only be done on quality products.

 

Q:  Anything else you’d like our customers to know as they get ready for our show?

Vicki:  Just to stop by the Roll One booth and let me know how skating is going at their facility.  I would love to hear what Roll One brands are selling well for them and those that are not.  Maybe I will be able to help with some selling points whether it be more information regarding the item itself or how to best display it in their skate shop.  I love to talk skating so please indulge me.  I look forward to seeing everyone at your trade show.

 

 

We thought it might be interesting to check in with several different vendors that are coming to our upcoming tradeshow and do a mini-interview to see what’s going on at these different companies, kind of a look ahead as we start to get ready.  The first company to get back with us is Roller Derby Skate Company.  We got responses back from Will Marion and also Tony Muse.  Here are there thoughts on a couple of different questions as we get ready for the fall skate season to kick in. . .

 

Q1

How are things at Roller Derby as the fall season gets ready to start?  How do you see the skating market right now?  Are your customers optimistic as the skate season gets started?

Will Marion:   It looks like a strong holiday season from the order flow right now – the market is good but in control so to speak as there is product to fill demand.

Tony Muse:  Things are going really well for us right now as we have a bunch of exciting skates for the fall and Christmas season coming up. The skating rinks are starting to pick up with school back in session and the birthday and private parties always follow closely with school coming back. Our updated Comet and Charger skates have been a huge hit for the kids and of course the GTX500 and Candi Girl are still fan favorites for the skating rink regulars. With new colors and an expandable Candi around the corner as well as our new Pacer Stratos, we plan to be under a bunch of trees this Holiday season.

 

 

Q2

Who from your company is planning to come to our show?

Tony Muse and Will Marion

 

Q3

Do you have any new products coming out this fall?  Will they be in stock by the tradeshow?  Or will they be coming out a little later in the season?

Will Marion:  We do have new product for the fall season – the new Stratos Pacer high top model, the new Lucy adjustable youth Candi Girl and our new Legacy Elite boot.

Tony Muse:  We do have some new items coming out for the fall such as the new Candi colors and models we discussed already as well as the Pacer Stratos. We have a new updated Primo coming out with a new chassis. We also have a brand new top of the line quad speed boot coming out called the LGCY. It is an amazing addition to those looking for the highest performance.

 

 

Q4

What are some of your best sellers right now?  What sets them apart from other products on the market right now?

Will Marion:  Candi Girl remains a big hit with a new model in the Carlin Series – Periwinkle / Orange colors – the new Comet and Charger models have been a big success and the multiple color options for the GTX500 have been a continued success.   What sets these apart I believe is the color combinations applied to the product.

Tony Muse:  The Candi Girl Sabina and Carlin sell really well with the younger female generation and we are even getting a bit of following with the Reewind for the boys. The GTX500 with all of the new fun colors we have is also a staple at nearly every rink. The biggest surprise to us has been the Comet and Charger as the kids have really liked what we have done with the colors and style. At the upper end, The Primo offers a leather sole for your Friday night skaters at a reasonable price and we ran out of our Octane Mag chassis in many sizes as it is considered the top high end chassis on the market for many vendors. Recently our Alpha skate has picked up sales. The big wheel skate always gets attention in the window but now people are realizing how easy and fun they are to skate on.

 

 

Q5

Anything else you’d like our customers to know as they get ready for our show?

Will Marion:  Just that I’m looking forward to seeing everyone again, and meeting anyone who would be new to your show.

Tony Muse:  I think this is a great time to be involved in the skating community. Roller skating is as popular as we could hope and with all of the innovation in technology, we keep improving the wheel. We love that the sport of skating is easily accessible to people and we love that we get to play a part in getting and keeping people fit.